My opinion on strength training being essential for health into old age largely stems from Peter Attia’s recent book Outlive [1] where he goes into great detail about the topic, and every piece of medical research I’ve ran into only seems to underline that having sufficient muscle mass is the single biggest intervention you can do to impact your long term health. Do all healthy old people do it? No, but if the question is what can you do to improve your odds, it seems silly to throw away the biggest lever you have (though it’s anyone’s personal choice to risk it and hope for the best).
(If you think he’s a quack and his message is wrong then I’d love to see some research pointing to the contrary, that having muscle mass is detrimental or at least does nothing significant for your long-term prospects)
The point about athletes is really more about pros, I should have been clear. I can guarantee you that almost every accomplished pro athlete in most sports, from running to swimming to cycling to basketball to gymnastics to soccer and the list goes on, incorporates a significant amount of strength training into their lives; there are probably some genetic freaks or sufficiently ‘roided mutants who don’t need to, but I assure you that Michael Phelps and LeBron James didn’t get their physiques purely by swimming and playing basketball.
And in case you think I’m talking about weight lifting for the purpose of competing at a bodybuilding show or strongman competition, that is not what I am referring to; I am referring to doing strength training to the extent that you have a reasonable amount of muscle mass. I don’t care if it’s traditional weight training or if it’s calisthenics or something else, so long as you don’t end up with no muscle tone and probably experiencing or prone to significant metabolic disease like most unfit people these days.
I agree that muscle tone is vitally important for human health and maintaining 'fitness' into middle and old age. However muscle tone and strength can come from many things, a lot of which don't need to deliberately include any form of 'strength training'.
I also agree that many modern professional athletes include specific strength training in their training regimes but this is a fairly recent phenomenon (e.g. tennis and swimming really only from approx. the 80s/90s on) and I don't see this as critical to them being 'fit-looking athletes'; it's only become necessary in a kind of arms race type of way, and in my opinion, with an unfortunate impact of modern competitive sport favouring 'power' over grace and technique. (I personally prefer the physiques of previous generations of athletes to those of most of the top athletes today, particularly the female ones.)
Why I responded fairly forcefully to your original comment is because it was a reply to someone who hadn't found strength training appealing and I perceived your reply as shutting down their thinking that some other option could be found that would build some strength and give other positive benefits of exercise to the questioner, including enjoyment and fulfillment.
Laws that prosecute ppl for possessing, downloading and storing computer files are deeply problematic, in my opinion. Whatever the content of those files.
(Publication of the contents of the files is another matter. I appreciate how this can be cause for prosecution.)
Including your 'tribe C' (the USA) with two indigenous tribes (A & B) in your example is highly disingenuous. And self-serving to your contrived hypothetical.
> LLMs have already shown that people can deny intelligence and human-like behaviour at will
I would completely turn this around. LLMs have shown that people will credulously credit intelligence and 'human-like behaviour' to something that only presents an illusion of both.
And I suspect that we could disagree forever, whatever the level of the displayed intelligence (or the "quality of the illusion"). Which would prove that the disagreement is not about reality but only the interpretation of it.
I agree that the disagreement (when it's strongly held) is about a fundamental disagreement about reality. People who believe in 'artificial intelligence' are materialists who think that intelligence can 'evolve' or 'emerge' out of purely physical processes.
Materialism is just one strain of philosophy about the nature of existence. And a fairly minor one in the history of philosophical and religious thought, despite it being somewhat in the ascendant presently. Minor because, I would argue, it's a fairly sterile philosophy.
The irony here, maybe unperceived by yourself, is that you're using one science fiction concept (time travel) to opine about the inevitability of another science fiction concept (artificial intelligence).
How is that ironic? Time travel doesn’t exist and - as far as we understand physics currently - isn’t possible.
I don’t think any serious man would suggest that AGI is impossible; the debate really centres around the time horizon for AGI and what it will look like (that is, how will we know when we’re finally there).
> I don’t think any serious man would suggest that AGI is impossible
Plenty of ppl would suggest that AGI is impossible, and furthermore, that taking the idea seriously (outside fiction) is laughable. To do so is a function of what I call 'science fiction brain', which is why I found it ironic that you'd used another device from science fiction to opine about its inevitability.
I find it amazing that the Chinese room is considered a serious argument by so many. Unless you believe in mysticism, it's refuted by pointing to your own head.
I’m not a singularity truther and personally I think we are more likely to be centuries rather than decades away from AGI, but I quite literally know of nobody who thinks it’s impossible in the same way that, say, time travel is impossible. Even hardcore sceptics just say we are going down the wrong rabbit hole with neural nets, or that we don’t have the compute to deal with the number calculations we’d need to simulate proper intelligence - none of them claim AGI is impossible as a matter of principle. Those mentioned are tractable problems.
> After all, earth could be understood as solar powered super computer, that took a couple of million years to produce humanity.
This is similar to a line I've seen Elon Musk trot out on a few occassions. It's a product of a materialistic philosophy (that the universe is only matter).
For some reason materialism is so popular among tech people that it's almost considered foolish/primitive/superstitious to think any other way. Why is that? Is it the fact that programming is a god-like experience that gives one the illusion the mind is as comprehensible as the complex program I wrote in Java? Or is it a shared personality trait of people that get into tech, that they are disconnected from an experience of their own aliveness and soul?
I would call the shared personality trait "pragmatism". Since tech people generally recognize that the preponderance of the evidence points towards a purely physical explanation for the human brain.
Even considering the hard problem of consciousness, there's no compelling reason to believe it can't have a physical basis, or can't be replicated in other complex systems.
Going back to the original comment, the perspective that "the earth is a computer that created AGI through humans" is not inherently wrong, though it may be a uselessly broad definition.
Theres evidence for the fact that the human brain affects consciousness.
What is the evidence that the brain causes consciousness?
As far as I can see, the only evidence people can produce is a general sense that science has successfully produced materialist explanations for everything it has tried to, and will continue to do so successfully forever.
However the reality is:
- Science has, up til now, failed to make even the slightest progress on the origin of consciousness.
- Science does not even claim to attempt to answer all questions about the human experience.
Therefore, the belief that science will, at some point, explain consciousness is not an inherently rational position, it is based on a sort of faith that science will succeed and apply everywhere. It masquerades as rational because of the materialist bias.
That's why I said "pragmatism" and "preponderance". It's a safer bet to believe science can explain consciousness than it is to believe in some alternative explanation, which otherwise makes no appearance in the universe.
If we had magic wands and ghosts floating around, then yeah I'd believe some kind of dualism or metaphysics. But if consciousness is the only real mystery in the universe, then sticking with materialism as the sole basis of reality seems pretty reliable.
Separately, the fact that changing the brain even a little bit can drastically change conscious experience, sure points to the brain being the cause. It makes sense that "experience" could be a side effect of certain highly complex highly connected systems. It doesn't make sense that "experience" (i.e. "having thoughts") magically drives those systems a certain direction. By the time I experience a thought, the underlying physics for it have already happened.
You're free to believe what you want, but be aware that
> It's a safer bet to believe science can explain consciousness
is not the rigorous logical position you are making it out to be. That is purely an opinion. There is no evidence that materialist science can explain consciousness - that's both an issue of track record and of principle (see the "hard problem" discussion).
> consciousness is the only real mystery in the universe
Consciousness is... pretty important. I wouldn't call it "the only real mystery," I'd call it, maybe, "THE mystery." So we must see things pretty differently if that's how you feel about it.
> It makes sense that "experience" could be a side effect of certain highly complex highly connected systems. It doesn't make sense that "experience" (i.e. "having thoughts") magically drives those systems a certain direction.
Again, "it makes sense" is an opinion. I'm not sure why you see it as less "magical" that the movement of particles would cause a subjective experience, but that is an opinion and a viewpoint, not a strictly rational belief system.
For example, to me, it makes sense and aligns more with my experience and studies that there is a soul that somehow interacts with the brain. We don't know how, but we also don't know how experience should be caused by matter, so I'm just not sure why people like yourself seem to think people like me are being foolish, superstitious, and irrational, and that your viewpoint is supported by science and logic, when it factually isn't.
Your viewpoint is supported not by the evidence, but by an axiomatic belief in materialism.
>I'm not sure why you see it as less "magical" that the movement of particles would cause a subjective experience, but that is an opinion and a viewpoint, not a strictly rational belief system.
Because cause->effect. If there is a soul or some other non-material power in the universe, why does it only influence the chemical reaction of animal brains? (We're not assuming the human species is special, right?)
My issue is that you paint tech people as arrogant or "disconnected from an experience of their own aliveness and soul" when in fact there is a much more mundane explanation -- they just have no good reason to believe in souls.
I've had many interesting and transcendent experiences, no reason to see them as anything other than extraordinary chemical states. For the closing remarks on this thread: why do you believe what you do?
We've clearly reached the limit of whatever common ground we can find here and will have to agree to disagree on what we each find intuitive and plausible.
All I hope to accomplish is to move you an inch away from the stance that materialism is the only reasonable way to think. That is what I mean by arrogance.
- Science has, up til now, failed to make even the slightest progress on the origin of consciousness.
- Science does not even claim to attempt to answer all questions about the human experience.
Similar argument could be made about every other subject that science has explained, prior to science explaining it. This is just an argument from the gaps.
Wait wait.. I thought nothing is allowed besides rigorously-justified scientific inference. But you've made your position unfalsifiable - there is literally nothing you believe science can't touch, even if it has failed so far to make progress. Is there anything you could imagine that would make you reconsider? Sounds unfalsifiable to me, and many would say that makes your theory logically unrigorous.
I like to call your belief system "science of the gaps." You have no evidence that science can touch the question, but you have faith it will, but worst of all you believe that your faith is superior to other well thought-out theories, which you dismiss automatically as foolish superstition.
Science is a process - it leaves room for "we don't know" or "this is wrong" in it's methods. But that alone doesn't mean that determinism and causality are a fraud, it just means that we lack the tools to record and observe what we want. The mystery of the aeolipile did not preclude 20th century aviation, and a lack of particle colliders doesn't revise the recorded history of physics. Science, when applied properly, really is a gap-filling measure. The "God of the Gaps" fails because it collapses as we learn more about our surroundings; in many ways, immaterial epistemology has been driven out of scientific research for the same reason. You can't have your immaterial cake and understand it too.
> Look up refutations of materialism to learn more.
Most refutations of materialism are just observably wrong. I don't disagree with a lot of the concepts, but most of them are used as means to nonsensical ends that only work if you reject the logical basis for everything that currently exists in reality. Anti-materialism is uncomfortably close to "revisionist objectivism" and sends you down a slippery-slope of trying to reframe all of science under a satisfying theory of everything.
Therein lies the conflict of modern traditionalism. Do you want to be correct, or do you want to be happy?
> that alone doesn't mean that determinism and causality are a fraud, it just means that we lack the tools to record and observe what we want
This, like many things strict materialists say, is an opinion masquerading as a rigorous logical conclusion.
> Science, when applied properly, really is a gap-filling measure.
I really don't understand why you think science is immune from the "gaps" criticism. Yes, science has an amazing track record, but only where it applies. Everywhere else, it's been useless. That's not a criticism of science, it's a criticism of those that seek to extrapolate it out to where it has no authority, and should have no authority.
The scientific belief system involves looking at evidence and drawing conclusions, right? The evidence shows science has not touched consciousness. It's not that it has made imperfect progress - it hasn't touched it. Not only that, but there are in-principle, logical reasons to believe it can't (see the "hard problem" discussion). What is the rigorous logical reason for ignoring this evidence and asserting that science will eventually solve every problem? A feeling that it probably will is not a rigorous logical reason.
Obviously, the brain is involved in our experience. But nothing science has discovered rules out the possibility that there's a soul that interacts with the brain, yielding our experience. If there is, cite those studies.
> Most refutations of materialism are just observably wrong.
It would help if you said what, specifically, you find wrong with the most convincing arguments against materialism, which you hint at.
To be honest, I don't understand the rest of your comment. More specifics without "isms" would help.
I differ on this recommendation. I watched some of it and found the show very mediocre and what 'help there was from the intelligence community' would have been provided to put a positive spin on the work done by Western intelligence agencies, which is mostly to protect Western corporate interests and neo-colonialism.
It's naive to think that any mass entertainment portrayal of intelligence agencies gives any real idea of how these agencies really function and what kind of work they actually do.
The mistake isn't thinking 'scaling is the solution to AGI'.
And the mistake isn't thinking more generally about 'the solution to AGI'.
The mistake is thinking about 'AGI'.
There will never be an artificial general intelligence. There will never artificial intelligence, full stop.
It's a fun concept in science fiction (and earlier parallel concepts in fantasy literature and folk tales). It's not and will never be reality. If you think it can be then either you are suffering from 'science fiction brain' or you are a fraud (Sam Altman) or you are both (possibly Sam Altman again).
The analogy they use in the article is all sorts of dodgy too :
> Removing more lithium ions up front is a bit like scooping water out of a full bucket before carrying it, Cui said. The extra headspace in the bucket decreases the amount of water splashing out along the way. In similar fashion, deactivating more lithium ions during SEI formation frees up headspace in the positive electrode and allows the electrode to cycle in a more efficient way, improving subsequent performance.
I like to sort comments by new whenever I see this linked. Doing this today, seems most ppl now are return viewers in on the joke and only a few asking "Is this real?". Used to be a lot more of the latter.
> All the fit-looking athletes you can imagine, also strength train to become that way.
These are two flagrantly false assertions; to think they are actually true you have to be living inside a weight-lifting bubble.
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